Ghost Towns & Cemetaries - Virginia City, NV

Seems like the journeys Pat and I have taken recently have taken on a certain . . . flavor . . . OLD. As in ghost towns and cemetaries.

We've promised ourselves that each time we venture out we'll hit someplace neither of us has been before. In early August our Tahoe trip included a visit to Virginia City, an old mining town perched at the 6,200 foot elevation on the side of a Nevada mountainside. Some will remember it as the fictionalized setting for the 70's TV series, "Bonanza."

To get there, we took the long way around from Carson City, via highway. As we wound through the mountains, incredible views emerged of Reno, in the distance. Amazingly a number of higher-end houses were tucked strategically along the highway, taking advantage of those vistas.

Virginia City, to me, at least, was at once fascinating and disappointing.

Fascinating . . . as we imagined the wild-and-wooley life of miners searching for elusive wealth. The evidence of a once booming town was obvious as we checked out the saloons that lined the main street along with the offices of the Territorial Enterprise, where Mark Twain began his journalism career. Juxtaposed against the saloons were St Mary's in the Mountains Catholic Church, which dominates the Virginia City skyline, and St Paul's Episcopal Church. Both of them are still active, although St Mary's is in the midst of an extensive renovation, so St Paul's currently serves as its subsitute.

Disappointing . . . because spider webs of wires strung along telephone poles mar the views of Main Street, along with the cars parked along its length. The mood built up by the wonderfully decrepit buildings is destroyed by the modern conveniences the autos and wires represent.

Piper's Opera House was a pleasant find, and I couldn't wait to let friend JK know I'd discovered it. What a marvelous bit of synchronicity when he told me that as a teenager he'd visited Virginia City a number of times with his mother. The Opera House was a highlight of his time there. He wonders if that might have been the start of his love affair with the world of opera.


We wandered up and down the street, into and out of the many saloons, enjoying a Sarsaparilla in one of them.


Ironically the part of Virginia City I enjoyed the most was the Silver Terrace cemetery. Unkempt, rocky and stark, the land this last resting place occupies must not allow for a a restful sleep as the wind howls incessantly among the headstones. Most of the graves date from the 1800's, with a few of them drifting into the 20th century.